TRADING STANDARDS

Your local county or unitary council’s trading standards department works to ensure a fair trading environment. It makes sure that consumers can be confident that they know what they’re buying, as well as how much of it. For produce sales, some key points to respect are:
 * Use scales calibrated by a trading standards department. Second-hand scales are acceptable.
 * When you list produce, indicate metric weights, e.g. “250g”. If you also use imperial this should be in smaller text.
 * When you list produce, indicate clearly what the produce is you are selling, for instance “tomatoes”.
 * Some produce, known as “countable produce”, may be sold by the number of items (e.g. eggs). Others may be bunched (e.g. asparagus), while others must be sold by weight.

Trading standards for box schemes
There is also specific weights and measures guidance on bag and box schemes. This covers all selling methods where the seller is selecting a variety of items of fresh fruits or vegetables and placing them in a container for sale. Weights and measures law generally requires the weight of pre-packed foods to be made known to customers. However, for packs of fresh fruits and vegetables, you may sell “by the box” if one or more of the following conditions apply:
 * The box contains more than 5kg of produce, or
 * The box contains three or more different types of fresh fruits and vegetables.